Reflections and ruminations on life, love and depression.

The great living room peace accord of 2010

Last summer shortly after my release from the psychiatric hospital, I took my kids to McDonald’s. From the drive-thru, we noticed something hopping through the bushes nearby. I pulled the truck over, and we discovered a tiny, skinny kitten – only a few weeks old. We decided we needed to rescue it, so my son and I lured it with french fries across the field until we finally caught it about 20 minutes later. My son wrapped it in his sweatshirt and his little brother held on to the dog in the back seat – she (the dog) was pumped… she wanted at the new squeaky toy!

When we got home, we installed the kitten and his litter box and food dish in the alcove at the top of the stairs between my room and that of my youngest. He was tiny and malnourished and needed lots of patience and quiet before he was acclimated to people. The dog would sit at the bottom of the stairs, behind the gate, looking up longingly… For weeks, the cat never set foot down the stairs, and given any opportunity – like if the gate wasn’t closed – the dog would bolt up the stairs like a rocket and chase the cat across my bed, under my bed, across the hall, up onto my son’s bed and back again. There would be barking, and hissing and ultimately, one of them would pee on the carpet.

After a time, the cat would sneak down a few steps and lie above the living room, watching and napping. The dog would jump from couch to chair, back and forth trying to reach him. Eventually, the cat, Polo, would come down just above the gate, where the dog could just reach her snout high enough to sniff him and he would bat her nose with his paws. Around this time, I would catch a glimpse of the cat peeking his head into the kitchen just as I took the dog out, and I’d see him turn tail and run back upstairs when we came back in. He was checking out the dog’s food and drinking from her water dish. The dog would come in and go nuts – racing back and forth, sniffing her dish and then running to the bottom of the stairs and back again.

In the last month or so, the cat started coming down below the gate – lying on the bottom step, he naps and watches us. Sitka, the dog, walks over to him and sniffs, gets swatted and returns for more. Lately she’s been bowing to the cat, to play with him. Last night, I watched in awe as the cat got up and started toward the kitchen… the dog walked at his side. They walked side by side to the kitchen and Sitka watched as her favorite squeaky toy drank out of her water dish, then escorted him back to the living room to the bottom step.

I felt like it was time to share something that wasn’t complete doom and gloom 🙂 Apparently dogs and cats are big on wordpress – I got fully 3x the number of views yesterday! I guess most people would rather hear about fuzzy friends than mad mommies…